Resolution: Clear Skies Ahead
The solution to the conflict. In short fiction, it is difficult to provide a complete resolution and you often need to just show that characters are beginning to change in some way or starting to see things differently.
Yourke examines some of the options for ending a story.
- Open. Readers determine the meaning.
- Resolved. Clear-cut outcome.
- Parallel to Beginning. Similar to beginning situation or image.
Her father drove up in a new 1964 Chevrolet Impala, a replacement for the one that burned up.
- Monologue. Character comments.
- Dialogue. Characters converse.
- Literal Image. Setting or aspect of setting resolves the plot.
- Symbolic Image. Details represent a meaning beyond the literal one.